Tuesday 9 April 2013

Socialist sanitary napkins, Russian weapons and much more from Venezuela

Sanitary napkins

If women want to get free "from the commercial vicious circle of savage capitalism", they can now buy biodegradable sanitary napkins in Venezuela. These napkins are basically the same stuff my grandmothers used, but now they are part of Socialism of the XXI century. 



More Russian weapons

At the same time the port of Puerto Cabello received a lot of Russian missiles the deceased caudillo had bought last year. You can read in Russian or in Spanish a little bit more about the purchase back in 2012. Do you think the Venezuelan military who helped in closing the deal will get a Matrushka as thank-you for their efforts?

Elections and passwords

The head of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, dismissed the opposition's concern after it found out members of the Chávez party had an access passwords to turn on and off the voting machines, something that only CNE employees should have. Lucena said that  password is not critical and more passwords are required to activate the whole system and that all parties had that key. 

And we are supposed to believe the Chávez party does not have the other passwords. The only non-Chavista  member of the CNE board contradicted Lucena and said the opposition didn't have the entry password and that none of the parties should have had any of the voting machines' passwords.

What most people don't get is that "voting machines" are in principle computers and you can program anything you want, it's a blackbox and no testing will be enough. Only witnesses everywhere and above all, witnesses actually counting the paper ballots until the bitter end would help. Some opposition politicians like Delsa Solórzano have told the public we have now witnesses gallore.
I think her intentions are the best. And yet:  even if we do, we are not sure they will be able to keep counting and defend the paper ballots in spite of the military and the militias wanting to "hurry up" things.

Meanwhile, the Carter Center, a bunch of people who do not seem to have any real IT expertise, are going to become observers once more. Jimmy Carter had previously declared Venezuela has the best voting system on Earth. That is quite amazing considering results in Venezuela take more time to come out than in manual systems like in Brazil or Chile. It is even more so if you take into account the military caste needs to close down schools for several days before the election day and one day after it.

Some sectors within the opposition are rather confident and think we might have a chance to win this election.

I do not think so, even if Maduro sucks as a speaker and even if decay keeps creeping in. But I am not so sorry: I don't think an opposition leader could keep himself in power for more than a few months if he were to be elected now. If Chavismo were to lose the elections, it would not just use the usual parliamentary blockage tactics used in other countries. Many of their key elements used terrorism and coups before. They would do that now.




3 comments:

  1. As usual under communism-one brand of sanitary napkins, one color, one size, one fabric. NO CHOICE and you better like it. Under capitalism, 12 brands, different sizes, colors, and fabrics. Lower price due to competition and maybe a even a rebate! Darn that savage capitalism is ruining my socialist vagina!! Hope they have a cute little picture of Hugo on them at least!

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  2. I think about socialism when it is clean up time after relieving myself. TP shrinks in size while the quality approaches that of sandpaper.

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  3. Oh, there are other sanitary napkins out there, even if they became scarce around 2011 and that was big news. Now Chavistas realised they cannot afford to "socialize" sanitary napkins just yet (tooth paste and sugar are problems now, though). The biggest problem I see here is the brainwashing that is being carried out...for later times.

    One point: I am no socialist, but I definitely don't think Venezuela is a socialist or, much less, a communist country. It still remains a feudal country with shopping malls where those with money can buy US salmon and Russian caviar and go around in SUVs. It does have some socialist models like the strict exchange control.

    It is a pre-capitalist society, but now it is managed by the military caste and very primitive, completely incompetent state socialists, who can't even get the few things socialists in Eastern Europe got right: some decent education for everyone or low violent crime. If they tried to bring about what they have in mind and only let Gabriela Chávez and the other boligarcs use iPads,there would be a huge revolution. So they just keep increasing the temperature in the kettle one bit at a time.

    Venezuela is a weird economic and polical system.

    ReplyDelete

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